332 NATURE STUDIES. 



familiar phenomenon of the transmission and reception 

 of vibratory energy. 



We are led along this line to conceive that some 

 association may exist between the phenomena of 

 so-called thought-reading, and those strange stories of 

 apparitions at the time of death or of intense suffering, 

 which have been narrated by so many persons of 

 .good repute (by so many, indeed, well known to fame), 

 -as to make the simple rejection of such accounts a 

 very unsatisfactory way of dealing with the evidence. 



Eespecting these experiences, the editor of the 

 Nineteenth Century formulated thirteen years ago 

 in the Spectator the following attempt at an explana- 

 tion : 



" Let it be granted that whensoever an action takes 

 .place in the brain, a chemical change of its substance 

 .takes place also ; or, in other words, an atomic move- 

 ment occurs 



"Let it be also granted that there is, diffused 

 throughout all known space, and permeating the 

 interspaces of all bodies solid, fluid, or gaseous a 

 universal, impalpable, elastic ' ether/ or material 

 medium of surpassing and inconceivable tenuity 



" But if these two assumptions be granted, and the 

 present condition of discovery seems to warrant them, 

 should it not follow that no brain action can take 

 place without creating a wave or undulation in the 

 .ether ? for the movement of any solid particle sub- 

 merged in any such medium must create a wave. 



" If so, we should have, as one result of brain 



